A team of US military investigators has discovered the remains of a jet pilot who was shot down in the opening hours of the 1991 Gulf War, the Pentagon said yesterday. This ends an enduring and painful mystery for Americans who feared he had been kept prisoner.

The remains of US navy Captain Michael 'Scott' Speicher were found in desert sands in Anbar province in western Iraq by military searchers acting on a July tip from a local Iraqi. The Iraqi told the US military that other Iraqis recalled a jet crashing into the desert sand and a group of Bedouins burying the deceased pilot, the Pentagon said in a statement.

The witnesses led a team of US marines to the area, where they discovered Speicher's remains. A jawbone found at the scene matched the pilot's dental records.

"Our navy will never give up looking for a shipmate, regardless of how long or how difficult that search may be," Admiral Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, said in a statement.

Speicher's jet was shot down on 17 January 1991, the day the US-led international coalition started the first Gulf war, making him the first casualty of the war. Saddam's government refused repeated US inquiries to discuss the case in the decade following the war's end, fuelling speculation that he had been captured.

In January 2001, President Clinton said just before leaving office that the US had new information suggesting Speicher had survived the crash, and the navy changed his duty status to "missing in action," from "killed in action". In autumn 2002, as the US prepared for war in Iraq, the navy again without explanation changed his status to "missing/captured," leading critics to speculate the Bush administration was trying to build a case for invasion.

Many Americans hold deep-seated suspicions that US forces reported missing in action are being held in long-term captivity, even from as far back as the Vietnam war. Across the country black flags fly in memory of prisoners of war.

Speicher's family issued a statement saying: "The news that Captain Speicher has died on Iraqi soil after ejecting from his aircraft has been difficult for the family, but his actions in combat, and the search for him, will forever remain in their hearts and minds."

Nels Jensen, a school classmate who helped form the group Friends Working to Free Scott Speicher, said his biggest fear was that Speicher had been taken alive and tortured.

He told CNN: "All the evidence that we were getting seemed to suggest that Scott was alive and being held against his will. We never sent out a search and rescue party, and if we had ... none of this mess would probably have been necessary."